![HOPELESSLY HOOKED](/images/headline/3414.png) Early television design rejected as a little too hypnotic. ![](/images/postimg/hopelessly_hooked.jpg)
We're doing a double on artist Mitchell Hooks with this cover for Gene Stackelberg's thriller Double Agent. Hooks was working this time for Popular Library, also in 1959 (we neglected to put the copyright in yesterday's post). CIA agent is accused of treason and can only clear his name with the help of the sister of a known informer. Gene Stackelberg was a pseudonym for Ouida Adams, a female writer who doubtless chose her pen name because it sounds so dry and serious, and likely because readers would be prejudiced against a female espionage author. As far as we can tell this was her only foray into fiction.
![THE FIRE WITHIN](/images/headline/3412.png) Underneath her cool exterior lies a completely different woman. ![](/images/postimg/the_fire_within.jpg)
Paula is another southern sin novel—i.e. set in a decadent, overheated south where sex and greed combine to produce deadly results. This one follows an oil worker who goes to work for an impotent millionaire and his young hottie of a wife—the eponymous Paula. Hero gets hottie pregnant and murder must follow, but it’s after the killing that things really begin to fall apart, and in unpredictable ways. You know the basic idea because you read it in James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. Though the cover art from Mitchell Hooks doesn’t specifically evoke a southern mood, it’s really quite nice, especially how the robe is rendered in a style that verges on calligraphy, complimenting the edges of the mirror, and how the reflection in the glass is red, revealing the fiery intensity beneath Paula's cool exterior. Nice touch. You can see a couple more Hooks pieces here and here.
![BORN LOESER](/images/headline/2514.png) They say there are victors and losers in life, but what if you’re both? ![](/images/postimg/born_loeser_01.jpg)
David Mark’s 1959 thriller Long Shot, originally published as The Long Chance in 1955, is a look at the life of a compulsive gambler. He picks winning horses, losing horses, marries Ruth, beds Katy and Carol, picks winning horses, picks many more losing horses, and eventually resorts to lies, cheating, theft, and so forth. To understand what the novel is about all you really need to know is the lead character’s doubly predictive name—Evan Victor Loeser. The excellent art here is by Mitchell Hooks.
![INFECTIOUS BEAT](/images/headline/2267.png) Jack Kerouac writes about the road ahead. ![](/images/postimg/infectious_beat.jpg)
Jack Kerouac gets a GGA style cover by Mitchell Hooks for the short, semi-autobiographical (of course) novel Maggie Cassidy. It’s a tale of high school into college, as well as love sought and lost, but you can always count on Kerouac to subvert conventionality. Maybe it isn’t his best, but it has those sparks and flashes of his unique style. The book was first published in 1959 by Avon, and this edition from the British imprint Panther appeared in 1960.
![AS THE WORLD BURNS](/images/headline/2262.png) Vintage literature reminds us that murder, deceit, betrayal, lust and greed know no boundaries. ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_01.jpg)
There’s a saying that the world is a book and those who don’t travel read only one page. But on the other hand, if you stay home the danger and mayhem at least happen in your own language. Which is the better course? Pulp authors seem to think it’s the latter. Above and below are twenty-one vintage bookcovers for fiction set in various cities around the globe. The writing spans genres such as romance, sleaze, horror, and espionage, and the art is by Mitchell Hooks, Barye Phillips, Robert McGinnis, et. al. Thanks to all the original uploaders.
![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_02.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_03.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_04.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_21.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_05.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_06.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_07.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_08.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_09.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_13.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_10.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_12.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_11.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_14.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_15.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_16.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_17.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_18.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_19.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/as_the_world_burns_20.jpg)
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
1986—Otto Preminger Dies
Austro–Hungarian film director Otto Preminger, who directed such eternal classics as Laura, Anatomy of a Murder, Carmen Jones, The Man with the Golden Arm, and Stalag 17, and for his efforts earned a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, dies in New York City, aged 80, from cancer and Alzheimer's disease. 1998—James Earl Ray Dies
The convicted assassin of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., petty criminal James Earl Ray, dies in prison of hepatitis aged 70, protesting his innocence as he had for decades. Members of the King family who supported Ray's fight to clear his name believed the U.S. Government had been involved in Dr. King's killing, but with Ray's death such questions became moot. 1912—Pravda Is Founded
The newspaper Pravda, or Truth, known as the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg. It is one of the country's leading newspapers until 1991, when it is closed down by decree of then-President Boris Yeltsin. A number of other Pravdas appear afterward, including an internet site and a tabloid. 1983—Hitler's Diaries Found
The German magazine Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries had been found in wreckage in East Germany. The magazine had paid 10 million German marks for the sixty small books, plus a volume about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. But the diaries are subsequently revealed to be fakes written by Konrad Kujau, a notorious Stuttgart forger. Both he and Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann go to trial in 1985 and are each sentenced to 42 months in prison. 1918—The Red Baron Is Shot Down
German WWI fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as The Red Baron, sustains a fatal wound while flying over Vaux sur Somme in France. Von Richthofen, shot through the heart, manages a hasty emergency landing before dying in the cockpit of his plane. His last word, according to one witness, is "Kaputt." The Red Baron was the most successful flying ace during the war, having shot down at least 80 enemy airplanes. 1964—Satellite Spreads Radioactivity
An American-made Transit satellite, which had been designed to track submarines, fails to reach orbit after launch and disperses its highly radioactive two pound plutonium power source over a wide area as it breaks up re-entering the atmosphere.
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